Floating Fortress
Floating Fortresses are essentially a defensive structures such as towers, forts, castles or strongholds that have been enchanted to break free of the earth they were built upon and float above the land. Several magical societies secretly claim to have knowledge of or access to such structures but few have publically claimed such a possession. Floating Fortresses, as well as the magic to construct them, have been placed on the List of Forbidden Items as of 5023 GR History Considered by most Wizards to be a myth as any evidence of such structures have been restricted by order of the Gizerad, the floating fortresses are difficult to locate and even more difficult to access. The origin of the first floating fortress is a bit mixed. Several magical societies claim to have been the originator but the magic behind the effect is fairly simple; levitation. A wizard of the Second Order or better is easily capable of raising an object in the air and holding it there indefinitely so long as there is enough energy to channel into the spell. The tale of the first floating fortress claims that a wizard, under seige by some force, enchanted his entire tower to levitate up and out of reach of the invaders - thus saving the people he had sequestered inside. Eventually lowering the tower back to its base he remembered the 'trick' for later use. Another wizard of his same House, so the tale goes, enchanted the tower (and the small mound of earth upon which it rested) to rise up and levitate off the ground and hover in place. To do so he would have had to install a fairly large crystal somewhere within the tower to assist in keeping the spell active. Such a large crystal is hard to find but not impossible. At first, the concept of floating towers were as synonymous with wizards as staves and tomes. They offered safety from any ground-based threat and a unique quality of privacy to allow them to continue their studies. The towers were a fixed 'island' upon the landscape that were commonly located in unsettled lands or outside of towns and villages. Once the towers began to spring up around the land, people - seeking the advise and or services of the wizard and unable to access them because of the 'air moat' between them and the caster - began setting up small tent-villages and communities under the tower. These small settlements, in time, grew into villages thus eliminating the privacy that the wizard desired. Creation To raise a tower or other defensive structure the wizard would have had to install a fairly large crystal somewhere within the tower to assist in keeping the spell active. Such a large crystal is hard to find but not impossible. Once the 'battery' is installed, the wizard needs to construct a large casting circle to encompass all of the area that they wish to levitate. These circles are often carved or etched into the base of the tower or onto the ground around the structure itself. Everything within the circle plus a few dozen yards beyond it will be within the mass that breaks away and lifts into the air. Through trial and error the wizards discovered that once the circle was enscribed, they needed to excavate a circle beyond the ring to aid in the break-away process. One wizard built upon a shelf of rock and then broke through the earth moments before the levitate spell was activated. Once the structure breaks away from the earth upon which it was built it will rise to an altitude that was determined by levitation spell escribed on the ring. Normally the floating fortress will hover over a single point - only when the enchanting wizard were to further the enchantments upon the fortress can the structure actually move beyond that point. Movement of any conventional speed requires additional arcane energy to fuel the spell. Movement Most floating towers or fortresses simply float up from their originally constructed location and remain in that static position even in the most extreme conditions. Somewhere within the development of the floating fortress, someone figured out that it wouldn't be a bad idea to be able to move the tower should the environment become dangerous. However, casting a flight spell on a large hunk of rock doesn't work the same as when cast on a person. The speed at which a fortress can move is directly proportional to the size of the fortress. A simple tower-island can move at a maximum speed of twenty miles an hour - nearly five-hundred miles in a day. A larger fortress-island may only move at between five and ten miles per hour. Known Fortresses Floating Fortress Category:Floating Fortress